Flame

Pierluigi Paganini March 04, 2014
Soghoian on government surveillance through service update process

Chris Soghoian, principal technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union, explained that government surveillance could exploit service update process. Chris Soghoian, principal technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union, during the recent TrustyCon conference highlighted the possibility that the government will exploit automated update services to serve malware and spy on users. Is this the next […]

Pierluigi Paganini March 03, 2014
Uroburos rootkit, is it part of Russian Cyber weapon programme?

Researchers at German G Data published an interesting analysis for Uroborun rootkit alleged to be a component of Russian cyber weapons programme. Uroburos is considered an advanced rootkit that is active since as far back as 2011, it is used to infect networks belonging to high-level targets, stealing data after setting up rogue P2P networks, it targets […]

Pierluigi Paganini March 02, 2014
Government-built malware and cyber weapons will run out of control

F-Secure’s Chief Mikko Hyppönen at the TrustyCon explained the risk that Government-built malware and cyber weapons will run out of control. F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer Company Mikko Hyppönen at the TrustyCon conference in San Francisco explained that almost every government is spending a great effort to improve its cyber capabilities building a cyber weapon. “Governments writing […]

Pierluigi Paganini February 11, 2014
The Mask – the most sophisticated APT operation seen to date

Speaking at Kaspersky Lab’s Industry Analyst Summit,Costin Raiu revealed details on The Mask campaign, the most sophisticated operation they’ve seen to date. The Kaspersky team recently announced to have detected a new significant APT campaign dubbed The Mask or “Careto” (Spanish for “Ugly Face” or “Mask”), a group of high-level state-sponsored hackers have been targeting government agencies, […]

Pierluigi Paganini February 09, 2014
Cost of conducting APT campaigns is dramatically dropping

Speaking at Kaspersky Lab’s Industry Analyst Summit Costin Raiu, revealed that the cost for APT campaign is dramatically dropping. The cost of developing advanced malware has fallen dramatically malicious code like Stuxnet and Flame are today economically more affordable. It has been estimated that the expense for the development of a cyber weapon like Stuxnet,or for a […]

Pierluigi Paganini November 10, 2013
Stuxnet infected the network of Russian nuclear facility

Eugene Kaspersky revealed that a staffer at the unnamed nuclear Russian plant informed him of the infection of internal network with Stuxnet. We have a lot of information on Stuxnet virus, a powerful malware that for the first time has shown to governments the capabilities and efficiency of a cyber weapon.  After its disclosure it’s […]

Pierluigi Paganini February 27, 2013
Stuxnet was dated 2005, Symantec discovered earlier version 0,5

Rivers of words have been written on the popular Stuxnet virus, there have been many hypotheses, sometimes contradictory, about its paternity but the only certainty seemed to be the date of its creation, but suddenly the certainty as happens in the best thriller movies has been called into question. The authors of Stuxnet, the malware […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 29, 2013
How the US are preparing to cyber warfare?

Every government conscious of strategic importance of cyber security and of the investments of other countries in cyber warfare capability is improving its effort. Last week I wrote about Russian government and the Putin’s request to reinforce the garrison of the fifth domain, the cyber space, through a series of investment to secure national critical infrastructures […]

Pierluigi Paganini November 23, 2012
The Flame is “ignited” between the U.S. and France

French weekly news magazine L’Express has reported that offices of France’s former president Sarkozy were hit by a cyber espionage campaign back in May 2012. Few days before the second round of the presidential election won by Hollande the President’s office was infected by Flame malware, within the compromise PCs also the one of Sarkozy’s […]

Pierluigi Paganini November 12, 2012
Nation state sponsored attacks: the offensive of Governments in cyberspace

Article published on The Malta Indipendent on October 11th 2012 Pierluigi Paganini, David Pace, Publishers of mainstream ICT news are ablaze with articles on the evolution of the “Flame” malware targeting the Middle East region for cyber espionage purposes, and new menaces such as Gauss or Shamoon.  No longer the province of deviant black-hat hackers or […]